Sir or Madam:
As I understand it, the current Last Call draft proposed by the W3
Consortium Patent Policy Working Group would allow companies to continue
to propose standards like CIFS (the Common Internet File System) for use
on the world-wide web subject to restrictions that are plainly intended
to discriminate against developers of free software.
I am certain there are other ways in which the "field of use"
restrictions placed on commitment of patent claims for "royalty-free"
use will be inimical to the free software community, but this
particularly naked attack on free software by companies with a
proprietary interest in web standards is not a matter of speculation; it
is already a reality. In particular, developers working on software
using the SMB protocol are better off working in ignorance of the
informtion on the CIFS provided by Microsoft, because that information
is made available subject to the proviso that it not be used in the
development of free software.
That companies like Microsoft would see free software such as Samba as a
threat is understandable, but that W3C would allow itself to be used by
companies like Microsoft in its pursuit of its apparent but unannounced
goal of arranging matters so that free software cannot interact with
full functionality with systems running proprietary software such as
Windows (tm) is not.
I therefore respectfully urge you to amend the policy to prohibit the
imposition of "field of use" retstrictions on patent claims contributed
to W3C standards.
Respectfully,
Robert B. Myers